BackStory

The following links and documents relate to the BackStory episode “Laboratories of Democracy: The State of the States”, originally broadcast in February of 2009. You can listen to the entire episode here.

All Centuries

• One way of thinking about the Constitution: a “peace pact” among the states
• Google preview of States’ Rights and American Federalism: A Documentary History
• Federalism as a philosophy

18th Century

• Alison LaCroix, author of Ideological Origins of American Federalism, sees a distortion of history in the debate over states’ rights
  
• Thomas Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolutions argue for states’ rights
• NPR story on Franklin, and other states-that-never-were

19th Century

• Historian Eric Foner’s articles on Reconstruction and beyond
• The Reconstruction Amendments and their significance today
• Primary sources on the 14th Amendment from the Library of Congress and Cornell Law
• The post-bellum American Black Codes
• Encyclopedia Virginia on the creation of West Virginia

20th Century & Beyond

• Recent article about the role of states in the Obama Administration
• Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ed Rendell in a recent debate about states and infrastructure at UVA’s Miller Center for Public Affairs
• On Point: States rights in the health care debate and beyond